Complementary and Alternative Medicine: Fair, Balanced, and to the Point

About this web log

This blog is intended as an objective and dispassionate source of information on the latest CAM research. Since my background is in pharmacy and allopathic medicine, I view all CAM as advancing through the development pipeline to eventually become integrated into mainstream medical practice. Some will succeed while others fail. But all are treated fairly here.

About the author

John Russo, Jr., PharmD, is president of The MedCom Resource, Inc. Previously, he was senior vice president of medical communications at www.Vicus.com, a complementary and alternative medicine website.

Common sense considerations

The material on this weblog is for informational purposes. It is not medical advice or counsel. Be smart, consult your health professional before using CAM.

Support this site

If you found the information here helpful, please consider supporting this site.If you found the information here helpful, please consider supporting this site.

The authors tell us this is the “first scientific evidence that active theater, coupled with conventional medical treatments, represents a valid complementary therapeutic intervention for PD treatment.”

It’s not clear what type of theater was used. Because it’s an Italian study we’ll assume music was involved.

Accordingly, other researchers in Italy have reported significant benefit with music therapy in patients with Parkinson’s disease.

More than a decade ago, researchers at the Department of Music, Theater, Dance, at Colorado State University, in Ft. Collins, looked at the relationship between rhythm, music, and motor function.

Rhythm and music are not entirely synonymous terms.

Rhythm constitutes 1 of the most essential structural and organizational elements of music.

When considering the effect of music on human adaptation, the profound effect of rhythm on the motor system strongly suggests that music is the essential element relating music specifically to motor behavior.

There’s evidence that the interaction between auditory rhythm and physical response can be effectively harnessed for specific therapeutic purposes in the rehabilitation of persons with movement disorders.

Perhaps the positive results reported in this study are a manifestation of this relationship.